Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council

With Iranians going to the polls today to "choose" a new president (though of course only one from among the small minority of candidates approved by the clerical establishment - and even then, vote-rigging may well occur) this Update is our guide to the candidates, the significance of the election, and its possible effects on the crisis over Iran's illegal nuclear efforts.

In an update to my recent blog on the deteriorating situation facing UN peacekeepers in Syria and Egypt, the latest development is the fallout of the short-lived seizure of the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force's (UNDOF) Quneitra border crossing by Syrian rebels on June 6.

Recent events only re-emphasise the precariousness of all Mideast peacekeeping.

In the latest controversy at the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC), UN Special Rapporteur Richard Falk used an official UN report meant to highlight injustices in the Palestinian territories to condemn an NGO critical of him. In the report, Falk blamed UN Watch, an NGO founded to monitor the performance of the UN against its charter, for discrediting his arguments and issuing criticism to UN diplomats and officials.

The unique experiences of Jews in Australia, the relationship between Australia and the USA and the global priorities in Australian diplomacy featured in a wide-ranging discussion with H.E. Kim Beazley, Australia's Ambassador to the USA, at a session of the Global Forum of the American Jewish Committee in Washington earlier this month.

The Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council played an important role in the deliberations of the Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism, which took place recently in Jerusalem.

Jeremy Jones AM, Director of International and of Community Affairs for the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, who is internationally recognised as the expert on antisemitism in Australia and an authoritative exponent of inter-religious dialogue, was given the honour of Chairing the Plenary Seminar " Muslim Religious Leaders Condemning Antisemitism".

The cult-like and self-aggrandising Boycott, Diverstment and Sanctions (BDS) anti-Israel campaign suffered another embarrassing setback this month when Facebook and Google wooed the Israeli content-savvy phone GPS app company Waze.

Meanwhile, the Israeli company SodaStream's unfettered growth continues to expose just how ineffective BDS really is.

Finally, the annual BDS conference once again exposed the movement as fringe, extremist and hostile to peace.

Speaking at the annual Global Forum of the American Jewish Committee earlier this month, the US State Department's Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, Ira Forman, noted the worrying global rise in anti-Jewish sentiment around the world...

The latest incident to be exposed internationally comes from CU-Divest, a pro-BDS group at the University of Colorado in the US...

Whilst Western anti-Israel extremists frequently dabble with various anti-Jewish slogans and themes, there is one particularly vicious Arabic chant that is heard with an alarming regularity at anti-Israel protests with a more Islamist bent...

Speaking to SBS Radio's Ron Sutton (June 5), Dr Mona El Farra, head of the health committee for the Red Crescent for Gaza Strip, blamed Israel and to a lesser extent, Egypt, for a litany of health problems in Gaza.

SBS's website noted that El Farra held a meeting with Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr and no doubt plied him with her propaganda.

Which is a pity, because she would do better to demand the world hold Hamas and the Palestinian Authority to account for their woeful and negligent governance...

It would be fair to say that the Israeli health system has been a unique success story - a model of humanitarian considerations trumping politics, as well as providing benefits both to neighbours such as the Palestinians living under their own health systems and Syrians, and offering unique medical innovations whose benefits are felt worldwide. It's just a pity that it is politics which largely prevents this success story being recognised - and where possible, emulated.

The recent passing of the Associated Press' acclaimed journalist Hal McClure at the age of 92 coincides closely with the event that brought him his greatest fame - his coverage of the 1967 Six Day War, which began 46 years ago yesterday.

His passing is yet another reminder of a bygone era when a journalist took pride in reporting the news, rather than acting as a partisan advocate for or against the newsmakers themselves.

Before refecting on that, however, the anniversary of the Six Day War offers us an opportunity to review some of the coverage of the war at the time in two of Australia's leading newspapers - the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age.

This Update deals with the announcement earlier this week by Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas that the relatively unknown Rami Hamdallah, the President of al-Najah University, will be the new PA Prime Minister, succeeding internationally well-regarded economist Salam Fayyad. Fayyad resigned in April after several months of conflict with PA President Mahmoud Abbas.

SBS TV's "Dateline" program (May 21) travelled to Greece to look at the worrying rise in the Neo-Nazi Golden Dawn movement which has used the economic crisis there to increase its Parliamentary representation through scapegoating Jews, foreigners, homosexuals and other rival political groupings.

Whilst it is clear that Golden Dawn mirrors its behaviour on the intimidatory tactics of fascism, Golden Dawn MP Ilias Panayotaros told Evan Williams that they take inspiration from Hezbollah, which has cannily attracted supporters over the years through the provision of social services.

As Panayotaros explained, "Golden Dawn wants to become and will become like the Hezbollah in Lebanon which in effect is a second government which helps even its poorest citizen and over time Golden Dawn will do more for our fellow citizens."

But that, of course, doesn't tell the full story. It's a pity that Williams did not follow up on the Hezbollah angle, and point out how it is not only a proscribed terrorist organisation in many countries but actually controls the Lebanese government.

Yesterday, Greg Sheridan noted in the Australian that Foreign Minister Bob Carr "expresses concern about the treatment of Christians and other minorities in the region", and said "The Foreign Minister is right to make this point and it is a sad commentary about political correctness in much of the West that almost no one raises a voice in defence of the increasingly beleaguered Christians of the Middle East."

Both Carr and Sheridan are correct. The sad reality is that Christians across the Middle East face an uncertain future, and their situation seems to be deteroriating rapidly.

Last week, this blog reported the refusal of NSW Greens MLCs David Shoebridge and John Kaye to sign the London Declaration on Combating Antisemitism, as well as their self-serving and disingenuous justification for rejecting the document.

It would be remiss of us to leave the story there. ... Especially encouraging was the decision by Jeremy Buckingham--a colleague of Shoebridge and Kaye in the NSW Upper House--to sign the Declaration, and thereby demonstrate that the NSW Greens party is not united against the principles in the Declaration.

Federal Greens Leader Christine Milne also issued a very welcome statement....

This Update deals with the aftermath of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah's very public announcement last week that Hezbollah was essentially completely dedicated to fighting "all out" on the side of the Assad regime in the Syrian civil war, following widespread reports that large numbers of Hezbollah fighters have been involved in the extended battle for the strategic Syrian town of Qusayr - plus what this means for Syria, Lebanon and the region.

US Secretary of State John Kerry had just concluded yet another visit to the Middle East. On his agenda were visits to Oman and Jordan to discuss the horrific Syrian civil war, and day and a half in Israel and Ramallah to continue his ongoing - but still unsuccessful - effort to reignite direct Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. His plane barely took off before some commentators started putting forward an old but very flawed theme - ‘it is all because of settlements'.

The unrest in the Arab world commonly mislabelled as the "Arab Spring" has put a strain on United Nations and other peacekeeping forces in the region.

Peacekeeping troops - in which Australia currently and historically has played a role - have limited options for defence available to them according to their mandate, are intended to observe, liaise and act as a buffer between armies.

However, regional non-state actors filling a vacuum created from the weakened national authority in countries affected by the unrest have been increasingly taking advantage of the limitations of the peacekeepers by opportunistically using them as soft targets, bargaining chips and even human shields.

One of Israel's most important economic relationships is with India and this continues to grow, with trade now around US$5 billion annually (excluding defence, which is reportedly very substantial). Furthermore, Jerusalem and New Delhi are currently negotiating a free trade agreement that is expected to lift trade to US$15 billion. But such cooperation is not confined to trade - Israeli technology is also assisting India's development in areas of food supply, clean water and training.

The Conversation is a website funded by Australian universities and the Federal government for academics and post-grad students to share the fruits of their enquiring minds.

Unfortunately, where the topic of Israel is concerned the Conversation is fast devolving into an outlet for a great deal of slothful, partisan and just plain stupid analysis.

In an extremely positive development in Australian politics, recent weeks have seen hundreds of Australian parliamentarians signing the London Declaration on Antisemitism...

Not all, however, support the Declaration. Two parliamentarians who have vocally opposed signing it are NSW Greens leader David Shoebridge, and his colleague in the NSW Legislative Council, John Kaye--who is Jewish by birth, if not by practice.

The two MLCs have written a post on New Matilda explaining their position. If that piece is a true reflection of their views on the subject, they seem to fundamentally misunderstand the substance of the Declaration.

Amongst the outcomes of that conference was the "London Declaration on Combating Antisemitism", which has attracted many Australian signatories in recent days, including the Prime Minister, every member of the Federal Coalition, and leading NSW State MPs.

In Australia, despite what those gullible enough to believe the insipid public contributions to the public discussion on the subject by Professor Stuart Rees may think, condemning antisemitism has little if any electoral benefits and actually attracts criticism from some on the political left (which once, in the past, trumpeted anti-racism).

And so the Prisoner X story came full circle, with ABC "Foreign Correspondent" reporter Trevor Bormann on May 7 following up on his February 12 expose that Melbourne-born Ben Zygier was Israel's mysterious "Prisoner X".

After the original broadcast, it appeared that Bormann's scoop had been largely superannuated when former Fairfax Middle East correspondent Jason Koutsoukis stepped forward to share his interactions with Zygier in the months leading up to his arrest.

Tyler's preoccupations are those of J Street and the Israeli revisionist historians. He is out to prove a point. Pinto looks at Israel through multiple, often unfamiliar lenses and is rich in humane sympathies. Tyler finds excuses again and again for Arab terrorism, while excoriating Israeli counter-measures "brutal".

The era of bad feeling that once governed Israel's relations with the eastern superpowers has been over for nearly a quarter-of-a-century.

Having exchanged ambassadors in the aftermath of the Cold War with both Moscow and Beijing, the Jewish State's trade with the two has since grown exponentially, as China became a major client of Israeli technology and Russia a major supplier of Israel's oil.

On May 21, Iran's unelected Guardian Council presented its slate of approved candidates to run in the Islamic Republic's June 2013 presidential elections. Of the more than 600 who sought to have their name on the ballot, it gave the go-ahead to only eight. They range from hardline supporters of Iran's nuclear program to somewhat more soft-spoken supporters of Iran's nuclear program. Most notably, the Council disqualified 78-year-old former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani on account of his age, a somewhat ironic move considering Ahmad Jannati, the Council's chairman, is 86, and revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was 77 when he led Iran's revolution.